Archive for January, 2014

Google’s ad business has matured into its awkward adolescent years, its latest results showed again Thursday.

The search giant’s old friends — direct-response advertisers — have been around long enough to know how much they want to spend with Google and how to counter the company’s efforts to get them to spend more, especially for mobile ads. And its new friends — brand advertisers — are still figuring things out.

As a result, even though Google’s ad revenue totaled $14.1 billion in the fourth quarter of 2013, up 17% from the previous year, that growth seems to have stemmed from people clicking on more ads, not advertisers paying more for each ad.

Facebook had plenty of good news to share from last quarter, like the fact that mobile now accounts for 53% of its ad revenue. But it held its tongue about the elephant in the room: declining usage among U.S. teenagers.

The growth of Facebook’s ad business is still being fueled by the adoption of news-feed ads that appear on desktop and mobile alike. That shift nudged the average effective price per ad up 92% over the previous year, according to chief financial officer David Ebersman, even while ad impressions dropped off by 8%.

The social network posted revenue of $2.59 billion, up 63% over the previous year. Net income was $532 million, up from $64 million in the fourth quarter of 2012, beating Wall Street expectations.

Yahoo’s top advertising executive, COO Henrique de Castro, may be gone, but the business’s problems remain.

“Ultimately Henrique was not a fit. That’s a very regrettable conclusion,” Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer said during the company’s earnings call on Tuesday. She said that the company does not plan to name a replacement. Yahoo head of the Americas Ned Brody oversees ads in the company’s biggest region and now reports directly Ms. Mayer, who said she will be taking a bigger role in that side of the business.

Ms. Mayer otherwise struck an optimistic tone, reiterating her disclaimer that Yahoo’s turnaround will takes years plural and dodging a follow-up question on Mr. de Castro’s departure. But the company’s fourth-quarter numbers were not so positive.

Apple sure sold a lot of iPhones over the holidays. But evidence is starting to mount that its flagship product isn’t the growth engine it once was.

While sales broke a record with 51 million iPhones sold in the all-important fourth quarter, that actually missed analyst estimates, and projections for the first quarter also fell short of estimates of 54.7 million handsets.

The company also said revenue will be $42 billion to $44 billion in the current quarter, with gross margins of 37% to 38%. Analysts had predicted sales of $46.1 billion and a margin of 37.3 percent, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Shares fell in extended trading.

At 27-feet-long and 14,050 pounds, the Wienermobile is the largest hunk of rolling meat on the road. And it can be yours for a day.

Oscar Mayer is handing over one of its iconic vehicles (there are a total of six) to the winner of a social-media contest that the hot dog brand is billing as “the first time ever a vehicle of any kind is available for lease exclusively through Twitter.”

To enter fans must tweet using the hashtag “#Tweet2Lease.” On Feb. 7, Oscar Mayer will randomly pick a winner. But there is one catch: While the winner will get “hand’s-on access to the Wienermoble,” they won’t be able to drive it. That duty will be left to a “Hotdogger,” one of the 12 specially trained full-time Wienermobile drivers who will act as a personal chauffeur for an eight-hour day.

AOL has struck a deal to acquire Gravity, a content-personalization startup founded by a triad of early MySpace employees, for $83 million, the company said Thursday.

The deal will help AOL tailor content to individual visitors based on their past browsing history. Perhaps more important for the company’s bottom line though, Gravity’s technology will also be used to make AOL’s premium advertising business smarter, giving AOL the ability to serve targeted sponsored content and native ads to individuals more likely to be receptive to advertiser messages.

“We’ve been at the forefront of trying to get ads to become more like content,” AOL CEO Tim Armstrong said in a phone interview Thursday. “And Gravity will help us serve better premium, high-value ads to consumers using data.”

Native advertising can be a murky — and if not done right, illegal — business. Just ask Microsoft.

Microsoft recently signed a sponsored content deal with YouTube network Machinima to promote the Xbox One gaming console. As part of the deal, Machinima recruited some YouTube creators to post videos positively promoting Microsoft’s product in exchange for ad dollars.

One problem: a number of the sponsored videos didn’t disclose that they were sponsored, as first reported by tech news site Ars Technica. That could draw scrutiny from an already hawkish Federal Trade Commission, which issued rules on the matter in 2009.